Bengals Remaining Schedule Spells Playoffs In Four Different Languages

Five and a half months ago, the brilliant minds at INSIC (read: John Breech) put together this AFC North preview.

In case you're too lazy to click on it, John had the teams finishing like this:

Pittsburgh 12-4
Cincinnati 10-6
Baltimore 8-8
Cleveland 6-10, 4-12 (He predicted 6 wins, but then he couldn't find six wins on Cleveland's schedule, so a day later, he lowered the prediction to four).


Now that the Bengals are headed into the bye week, it's time to do two things: 1. pat John on the back for being so smart 2. Predict the rest of the schedule.

Before we look at the Bengals nine remaining games, we have some good news and we have some bad news.

The Good News: Marvin Lewis has a 15-9-1 career record in November.

The Bad News: Lewis is 1-4-1 coming off of a bye week. Although there is a silver lining to the bad news as the one win just happened to come in 2003 against... you guessed it... the same team the Bengals play coming off the bye this year, the Ravens.

So are the Bengals going to make the playoffs, do they have any shot at the Super Bowl, lets find out. (By the way, does the Super Bowl logo at right look orange black to anyone else, is this a good thing, can the Bengals just have the Lombardi Trophy now?)


November 8 and 15: Ravens and Steelers. These two games are lumped together for one reason, the Bengals are not going to lose both of them. Dustin Diamond will win an Academy Award for playing Screech Powers before the Bengals lose both of these games. This team is too good to lose two games in a row. Will they lose to the Steelers? Maybe. Will they lose to the Ravens? Possibly, but they will not lose to both of these teams. Record on November 16: 6-3.

November 22: Bengals at Raiders. The problem for the Raiders is that if Helen Keller were still alive and they signed her, she would be an upgrade at quarterback. Bengals improve to 7-3.

November 29: Browns at Bengals. If Browns coach Eric Mangini was a hostage negotiator, everyone would be dead in under three minutes. Bengals up their record to 8-3.

December 6: Lions at Bengals. Raise your hand if you know when the Lions last beat the Bengals. We'll give you a hint, Barry Sanders scored a touchdown and Beverly Hills 90210 was our favorite show on TV. If you guessed November 22, 1992, slap your self for knowing too much. Bengals claw their way to 9-3.

December 13: Bengals at Vikings. The blog will be live from this game. Brett Favre should be just injured enough by this time to be absolutely useless (just ask the 2008 Jets). Bengals hold All-Day Adrian Peterson to 68 yards and improve to 10-3.

December 20: Bengals at Chargers. Putting the Bengals on the west coast is like putting a mail bomb in Ted Kaczynski's hands and asking him not to blow anyone up. The Chargers are always desperate for a win by this point in the season. Bengals fall to 10-4.

December 27: Chiefs at Bengals. Larry Johnson is a fag. Well actually he called someone that and now he probably won't be playing football the rest of the season, but you have to admit, that's a pretty cool way he's wearing his hat in the picture below. Bengals win and improve to 11-4.

January 3: Bengals at Jets. It's the last regular season game ever at the Meadowlands. If the Bengals can't improve their playoff positioning and this game has no meaning, then they're going to lose. It's that simple. Lets drop them to 11-5.

Steelers are going to go 12-4 or 11-5, Ravens are going 9-7 or 8-8 and the Browns, who blow more than a 3-year-old playing with bubbles, will go 3-13.

Here's how John ended the blog back in May, so let's do it again:

I implore Bengals fans to buy playoff ticket vouchers now. Forget paying rent this month (sorry Preston); I’ll be snatching up about 17 of those bad boys. Ladies and Gentleman, you’re 2009 AFC North.